


Night creatures

by TheMissingMask



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I needed to cheer myself up tbh, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon, Vampires, if it is going anywhere, not sure where this is going
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 00:21:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMissingMask/pseuds/TheMissingMask
Summary: The fate of Renfield after the events of the final episode





	Night creatures

**Author's Note:**

> In all honesty, I wrote this mostly because I wanted to cheer myself up by giving Renfield a happy (or happy ish) ending. It may remain a oneshot, or I may continue it. There are bits and pieces of the rest of the story lying around in my brain, so who knows.

Renfield knew the very moment his master ceased to be. As the limbs of a marionette hang suddenly heavy the instant its strings are cut, he felt in a moment as if not a single thing in this wretched world was left to hold him up. There was a sense of plummeting towards an abyss. He was keenly aware of the meaning of that vacuous sensation. He knew what it meant, felt what it meant. The loss of that one vital presence in his miserable life. Of the one being that had ever truly regarded him with anything more pleasant than sheer indifference.

One moment that being was there, a sensation in his mind, the strings that held his worthless body and soul aloft. Another moment, and it was extinguished from this world.

Out the window he could see the whispers of that so cruel sun already beginning to poison the blissful dark.  A bell far off struck its solemn tones.  Many hours had passed since his master’s demise, and yet that bell it was the first sound of which Renfield had been truly aware, and he determined that it too should be the last.

The straight waistcoat was a complication, he thought at once, but on considering this matter realised it had been removed.  When had that taken place?  Had he been so abject in mourning for his master, or so intent in his fixation on the night outside, or so despondent in the disappearance of his only almost-friend, that he had not even marked its removal?

Perhaps some benevolent god truly smiled down upon him now.  Perhaps his master, no longer of this world, had offered that final gift to him.  The freedom to do away with his wretched being and leave this lonely world behind.

Numbly and without coherent thought, Renfield pulled up the sleeve of his simple white patient’s garb and bit down into the pale flesh beneath.  The blood that ran from his pierced vessels was unlike that of his master.  It was not rich velvet, but rather acrid and polluted water.  He let it spill to the stone below, closed his eyes, and welcomed the blessed dark.

———

When they left the Dragon’s Den, everything seemed muted somehow.  As if a fog somehow greater than the ever-present smog had engulfed London, leaving the edges of everything hazy and uncertain, and the very air thick with a mephitic tinge.  The dregs of human life that happened to venture outside at that early hour scurried in the dawn-deepened shadows, passing ever so often beneath the lamp light as hallucinations flitting in the corner of one’s mind.

The people grew fewer and the smog somehow thicker as Dr Seward neared Bedlam.  Were it not for Dr Frankenstein at her side, she would have supposed not a living soul walked the surrounding streets.  The young man had confessed that, in his haste to depart the preceeding evening, he must have left unattended some of his notes and equipment at the asylum, and was very keen to retrieve them.  The truth all too plain to Dr Seward’s experienced eye was that he did not wish to be alone with his grief just yet.

Dr Seward was with him in that mind.

As they walked the damp and overbearing grey corridors running throughout that terrible institution, the cries and moans and frantic whispers of the lunatics echoed their own whirling thoughts and grieving hearts.  It felt like a lament for Vanessa. All the shunned and forgotten monsters in the bowels of the great city crying out for her loss.

How the stricken mind twists the normal and mundane into hallowed significance.

The orderly stationed outside Renfield’s room was dozing when they arrived, his broad head tocked back against the stone wall and his feet propped on an overturned bucket.  Dr Seward glared for the barest of moments at his stupor before kicking the bucket from beneath his feet.  The man awoke with a startled cough and almost went to start yelling indignations before he beheld the stern woman before him, and instead contented himself by muttering a disgruntled apology.

“Open it.” She ordered, nodding to the iron door.

“A’ight.” He gruffly rose and fumbled with the keys.

Victor was hesitating near the door.  There was not exactly an etiquette for accompanying visits to inmates of an asylum, and certainly not ones at this level of the facility.  The woman, seeing his uncertainty, offered a thin smile and nod, a signal that he ought depart to whence his belongings might be retrieved.

Scarcely had he reached the end of the corridor that he was brought back on hearing an anguished cry.  He sprinted to the cell door and peered inside, biting back a curse at the sight that greeted him.  Urgently, he shoved past the orderly into the room, rolling up his sleeves as he knelt beside the prone form of the man he could only take to be Mr Renfield.

Dr Seward was the other side of of the body, blood already seeping into the fabric of her coat and dress.  It was impossible to avoid such transference.  The red liquid was pooled all about the inmate’s body.  There were wounds on his both wrists.  Ragged and torn, as if something had ripped at the skin.  Judging from the blood around the man’s mouth, that something had been his teeth.

The inmate’s deathly pallor stood in horrific contrast to the deep hue of the blood all about him.  Victor reached over to press his fingers against the man’s neck, marking absently the two minute puncture wounds there.

“How in God’s name did this happen?!” Dr Seward yelled in outrage at the orderly, who backed up slightly at her tone.

“A waist coa’ was needed down the hall,” He explained in a thick accent that Victor’s tired mind could barely penetrate, “They keep ‘em up top, an’ it’s quicker to take one offa one down ‘ere, an’ ‘e was all quiet an’ not tryin’ to attack us, so…”

“It wasn’t _you_ the waistcoat was intended to protect!” Dr Seward yelled, causing the burly man to shy back nervously. She didn’t mark the motion, nor feel the usual glow of pride in her ability to induce such apprehension in a man. She had not the energy for such thoughts at present.

Dr Seward looked to Victor in the vain hope that the physician had identified some sign of life she had missed.  But he shook his head apologetically, and they added R. M. Renfield to the list of dead that night.

_  
\---Past---_

_Dr Seward didn’t bother looking up as she called in the next prospective employee.  He was light-footed, she noted as he carefully pushed open the door and walked into her office, and she could practically hear the blood rushing frantically through his veins as he stood before her and waited with one fidgeting foot to be seated.  As soon as she bade him do so, he did.  Adjusted the chair three times, and his foot resumed tapping, lightly enough that she imagined he believed her not to notice._

_She continued writing her notes on the last candidate. In truth, she had made her mind up to not hire the girl within moments of her entering, since she had something of the disposition of a gossip and that was something the doctor could not abide. Certainly not in her secretary. Nonetheless, it felt prudent to let this next candidate, nervous disposition as they seemed to possess, wait. See how they handled the stress._

_After a few moments, she took a fresh sheet of paper, carefully dipped the nib of her pen in some ink, and requested a name._

_“R. M. Renfield.” Came the reply. Well spoken, she noted, clear and making a pretence of confidence. Male, oddly enough. There were, in her experience of society, very few men who would willingly put themselves in a position inferior to a woman. She almost smiled at the interest this piqued in her, and finally looked up._

_“Good afternoon, Mr Renfield.” She appraised him in a single sweeping glance. Well kept, yet old and inexpensive attire. Dark, tidy hair with little character to note about it. Slate blue eyes that seemed fearful and excited and curious all at once, and were hidden behind a pair of round glasses. Slender of stature, and probably fairly tall when standing, but in no way threatening._

_“Good afternoon, doctor.” His reply was almost cheerful, but the tapping of his foot sped up._

_“Have you experience?” She asked, turning back to her sheet and making a show of jotting some points of interest down, all the while monitoring him for any sign of excessive curiosity in the particulars of what she wrote._

_“No, I regret that I do not.” He replied, and glanced up enough to see his eyes on the corner of the table, not the paper and not her._

_“Most people would have lied.” She stated flatly._

_“Lied?” The concept seemed to bemuse him._

_“About having no experience.” She clarified, “Why should I hire someone with no experience when I have seen three others today with at least two years worth.”_

_The foot tapping ceased in an instant._

_“I am a fastidious learner.”_

_“I don’t have time to teach you.”_

_“You need not.” He said quickly as if afraid that she would end the interview then and there, “Just tell me what is required, and I will teach myself as necessary.”_

_She raised an eyebrow at this, but decided not to address the matter immediately. Instead, she asked the same question she had asked the other candidates, solely because it seemed appropriate rather than any care she had for the actual response._

_“Where were you educated?”_

_“Nowhere of note.” He replied, and she surveyed him with genuine interest before rephrasing the question._

_“Were you educated?”_

_“Not formally.”_

_She smiled just slightly at the unneccessarily honest, perfectly succint answers this man gave. He certainly made an interesting study._

_“You are literate?”_

_“Very.” He replied with a confidence that he had hitherto not displayed. Very interesting indeed._

_Nodding mutely, the doctor made a few more meaningless notes on the paper for no reason other than to make Mr Renfield squirm. His nervous agitation was really quite endearing. Finally, once she decided her personal entertainment was starting to border on a little cruel, she set her pen down and stood, holding out her hand to the man. After a moment’s hesitation, he stood too and firmly shook the outstretched hand._

_“You start tomorrow.  Be here at 7 am.” She said, sitting back down._

_“Thank you, doctor!” He broke into a broad smile, “Thank you.”_

_\----------  
_

No bells rang out when Vanessa and Renfield died.  No flags were hung at half-mast.  No mourning bands were worn.  Dr Seward returned immediately to work as if nothing had happened.  As if she had not just lost the closest two people she had to friends in all the world.  Grief would do no good.  She had clients who needed her, and she needed the distraction those clients provided.

It was unsettling being in that office without her secretary outside, without him scribbling away in his books with that scratchy pen of his.  The day felt unpunctuated in the absence of Renfield’s knocks on the door to inform her of waiting patients or request her seal on some letter or other.  She had barely noticed over the preceding weeks how he had ceased to join her for tea in the afternoon, but now she found an intense sadness being without that small moment of peaceful civility.  She had missed it more than she realised, most likely because of the interest in Vanessa’s case and the friend found in the other woman,

Now both were gone.  Her interesting new client, her secretary.  Her friends.  The office was too quiet when without a client to fill the silence, too noisy when they were there.

The day was a long one.  Or, rather, it seemed so.  As the doctor finally left that evening, feeling exhausted beyond reason, she paused at the door and looked back through the darkness at Renfield’s overcoat.  It hung limp and dull where he had left it the day before.  For some reason, Seward felt compelled to take it with her.  Maybe she didn’t want the reminder at work anymore, or perhaps she wanted the reminder at home instead.  The thought of going home was somehow even lonelier than this place.

Grabbing the coat quickly, as if trying to hide the very act from herself, she headed briskly out the door, almost forgetting to lock it.  That was usually Renfield’s job.  He was usually the last to leave.

Barely had she both feet on the street when a sudden voice from the shadow cast by the steps made her breath catch. She spun in alarm towards it.

“Doctor?” The voice was meek and quiet and so, so painfully familiar.

“Renfield?” She whispered back, although some part of her logical mind screamed the lunacy of replying to an illusion.

But if this was a figment, it was entirely too real.

Renfield stepped, white and trembling, into the yellow light of the street lamp above them.  He was dressed the same off-white clothes of an asylum inmate, sleeves and collar stained with so much blood it’s bitter stench filled the space between them.  The blood around his mouth was redder than that on his arms, and it glistened as if still fresh.

“Help me.” He begged, so utterly pitiful, “ _Please_.”

The sudden appearance of a dead man should, Seward realised, have shocked her.  But in the wake of events over the past few weeks, and despite the initial alarm at hearing his voice, she found herself strangely composed.  Whatever this new turn of events, whether dream or apparition or something else, she was prepared to face it.

Calmly and with a level voice, she addressed him as if he were one of her patients.  Absently, she considered that perhaps he ought to have been.  Perhaps that could have prevented _this_.

“What has happened to you?” She asked.

Renfield shook his head, either to try and find an answer or convey that he had none.  It appeared, ultimately, that he could come to none, for after some moments of silence, he murmured, “I am afraid.”

She took a careful step forward, intently monitoring his reaction for any indication of violent intent.  He made no move against her.

“What are you afraid of?”

“The night creatures.  _His_ creatures.” Renfield whispered, looking around nervously as if they might hear him.

“Dracula is dead,” She took another step, “He cannot harm you now.”

He laughed suddenly.  A harsh, manic sound that seemed to tear through Seward’s soul. She drew back involuntarily.

“If you believe that, then you understand nothing of him.” His pale eyes flitted about frantically, “He has many allies.  Many _friends_.”

“Friends?”

“Shh!” He hissed, looking around in panic.

“We can protect you.”

Renfield almost giggled at the notion, but there was no mirth there, “You will not want to protect me.”

“Why not?” She took another step forward, “You led us to him."

“I betrayed him.”

“You helped us.”

“I am a monster.”

She stepped forward further and, with a hand on his arm, surveyed him for a long moment.

“I’ve seen monsters. I’ve known monsters. You are no monster, Renfield.” She said, then smiled wryly, “Mad, perhaps, but not a monster.”

He smiled in turn, just slightly, nothing more than a subtle upturn at the corner of his red lips.

“Is that your professional opinion, doctor?”

In the silence that followed, something shifted between them. Something akin to understanding. Some sort of mutual forgiveness and acceptance. The doctor handed her former secretary his coat, which he wrapped around himself as if to keep out a chill that the air did not hold. She took his hand just as she hand as they walked through the darkened streets in his mind and led him home.

At her house, she ascended the steps alone, leaving him standing below, still looking about in a nervous sort of jitter.  She stood just inside and waited, but he made no move.

At last she sighed and said, “You had best come in, Mr Renfield.  I can’t have you standing on my porch all night.  The neighbours will start to talk.”

He started suddenly as if from an electric shock and nodded, hurrying up the steps and stumbling over one or two in his vigour.

“Thank you, doctor.” He smiled as he passed the threshold, his expression relieved and demeanour so much more his old self than she had seen in weeks, “Thank you.”


End file.
